Archive for the ‘AACA Hershey Meet’ tag

In an effort to make its annual fundraising event more casual, the AACA Museum has decided to throw open the doors to its rarely shown storage building during this year’s Hershey Meet week for a new event the museum has dubbed “TorqToberFest.”

One of two storage buildings the museum keeps cars in, the larger—which museum staff refer to as “Jim’s place” after a donor to the museum—sits behind and below the museum itself and houses about 50 cars that the museum owns and rotates in and out of its regular and seasonal displays.

“We never open it to the public except for select groups,” said Nancy Gates, the museum’s director of marketing and communications. “The cars are only in there because we don’t necessarily have space for them on the museum floor.”

Other museums, most notably the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, have also started offering tours of their off-display collections in recent years.

TorqToberFest will replace the museum’s annual Night at the Museum fundraiser, a single-night event that called for a sport coat, button-down shirts, and slacks—more formal attire than the jeans and T-shirts (or, depending on the weather, sweatshirts, muck boots and/or parkas) that most Hershey week attendees prefer. Gates said the three-night TorqToberFest will instead permit more casual attire and “be more accessible from a pricing standpoint.”

“Hershey is a time when people come together, whether it’s with friends or in clubs, and we’re hoping those groups can consider this as a place to meet,” she said.

In addition to access to the storage facility and to the museum itself, TorqToberFest will offer craft brews, free food and entertainment to be announced. Each of the three nights will have a different cuisine theme: American, German and Italian. Single-night tickets ($45) and three-night passes ($120) will both be available. The Night at the Museum’s silent auction will carry over to TorqToberFest.

TorqToberFest, presented by RM Sotheby’s, will take place Wednesday, October 8, through Friday, October 9. For more information, visit AACAMuseum.org.

John Moir has been described as a “towering figure in the AACA world,” but the amiable New Hampshire collector is perhaps best known for his assemblage of automobiles representing each letter in the alphabet. Most are in pristine condition, but one model, a 1956 Volkswagen Type 1, is in a clear state of disrepair, covered in decades of barn dirt. When the John Moir collection crosses the stage next month in Hershey, Pennsylvania, other automobiles from his inventory will have greater historical significance (and higher selling prices), but few will have the sentimental value of the tired VW Beetle.

Purchased new in 1956 by Moir’s father, the Volkswagen served as frugal commuter transportation, used primarily to carry the elder Moir to the train station in inclement weather. Finished in a shade that Moir described as “VW Grey,” it was indistinguishable from the other similarly hued Beetles in the lot, a problem John’s father solved by hanging a fox tail from the car’s rearview mirror. When visiting friends or family needed transportation, more often than not they were given the keys to the Volkswagen, which would prove to be the last new car purchased by John Moir’s father.

Eventually, the car was given to John’s brother, who later passed it down to his own son. Somewhere along the line, the car suffered body damage, as seen in the misshapen fenders and broken headlight cover on the passenger side. Eventually the car, now a family heirloom, found its way back to John, by then an established collector of vintage automobiles. Stored in his barn, the Volkswagen marked the passage of time by accumulating layers of dust, but its 36-horsepower, 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-four remained largely silent. Perhaps for practical reasons, or more likely for sentimental ones, John never had the Volkswagen restored.

When the “barn fresh” Volkswagen crosses the Hershey stage, its sale will represent the first time that the car has ever been offered to the public, and the first time that the title has ever belonged to someone without the last name of Moir. In its current condition, RM predicts a selling price between $5,000 and $10,000 (making it the least expensive offering in the Moir collection, aside from the quirky, moped-engined Zoe Zipper), which reflect the fact that a thorough restoration will be required.

Per RM, the Volkswagen is one of the final Beetles built with the transitional small rear window, which spanned the gap between the original two-window design and the later large rear window that remained throughout Beetle production. At the very least, it’s a rare example of a Type 1 export model from Volkswagen’s first decade of commercial production, with clear ties to a significant automobile collection.

RM’s Hershey sale will take place from October 9-10 at the Hersey Lodge in Hershey, Pennsylvania. For additional information, visit RMAuctions.com.

UPDATE (13.October): The unrestored Volkswagen Type 1 sold for $4,500, including buyer’s fees.

For this member of the Hemmings contingent that attended the 2012 AACA Eastern Regional Fall Meet at Hershey, Pennsylvania, the highlight of Saturday’s AACA show was seeing the spunky Superoo on display, sharing the field with some of the most beautifully restored and original-condition cars ever built.

This little front-wheel-drive two-door started life as a 1972 Subaru GL, and it was the first factory-backed, factory-financed, competitive Subaru race car in the United States, having been road-raced from new in a “development-through-racing” program. It remains today in its circa-1987 SCCA GT-4 racing livery.

The highly anticipated Hershey Week is nigh upon us; that famous gathering of everything automotive in Hershey, Pennsylvania, technically known as the AACA Hershey Fall Meet. Although vendors will be in town to set up their wares as early as Tuesday, the official festivities begin Wednesday, including the sixth annual Night at the Museum. This year, the AACA Club, Library and Museum, and RM Auctions have joined forces in presenting the event – Celebrating the Motoring Hobby – within the intimate setting of the AACA Museum just one mile north of the swap meet fields. Fine cars, food and beverages will be accompanied by the rhythm and blues band Jazz Me and instrumentalist Nate Carabello, while artists Larry Anderson, Bill Bravo, Joe Pepitone, Dan Reed and Mark Watts present their work. The evening will also include a silent auction. In addition to the array of vehicles on display, attendees will have the chance to closely examine two special displays: 100 Years of Chevrolet and Dusty Jewels: Off Road Motorcycles of the 1970’s.

Just in time for both Meet Week guests and Night of the Museum attendees will be the arrival of the one-of-a-kind 1955 Flajole Forerunner, donated by Mark Hyman. Designed and built by Bill Flajole – then a consultant for American Motors – at the cost of a then-staggering $80,000, it appeared in several contemporary magazines. According to the AACA Museum’s description:

The Forerunner incorporates many futuristic design elements like its retracting tinted Plexiglas roof, headrest bucket seats and contrasting color fender coves, well before any of these items were put on a production car. Its chassis is among the best of its day, Jaguar’s high performance 180 horsepower XK 120M with an SCCA race class win to its credit while Flajole’s studio was creating the Forerunner’s body. The glass fiber body employed molded-in open louvers and elaborate compound curves never before attempted in fiberglass. Its windshield header-mounted rearview mirror foreshadows later designers’ use of periscope optics.

For more information about AACA’s Night at the Museum, visit NightattheMuseum.org or call 717-566-7100. For more information on the AACA Hershey Fall Meet visit HersheyAACA.org.